


Split into Parts

by So_Caffeinated (so_caffeinated)



Series: Crazyness in Crazy Town (cross-fandom prompts) [6]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter RPG
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Gen, Resurrection Stone, The Deathly Hallows, horcrux, magical jewelry, meme challenge, prompt: crack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-19
Updated: 2013-05-19
Packaged: 2017-12-12 06:48:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/808546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/so_caffeinated/pseuds/So_Caffeinated
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Meme Challenge<br/>Prompt: Crack (yes, I willfully misinterpreted this prompt)<br/>Character: Clio Harper (Harry Potter RPG original character)</p>
    </blockquote>





	Split into Parts

**Author's Note:**

> Meme Challenge  
> Prompt: Crack (yes, I willfully misinterpreted this prompt)  
> Character: Clio Harper (Harry Potter RPG original character)

 

She stares down at the ring resting in her palm and it stares back, the crack in its stone making it feel eerily alive, a kneezle’s eye flooded with light. Clio can’t break it’s gaze. Can’t breathe. Can’t even think straight.  
  
The ring is an ugly thing, heavy and poorly made, but the stone so sloppily faceted to the amateurish work... the stone. It doesn’t take a magical jeweler to recognize that stone. Any pureblood would know it on sight, she thinks. It is the stuff of legends, of childhood bedtime stories that even she was told. But it’s more than that. It’s a cautionary tale wrapped in carefully woven juvenile narrative, a lesson about what happens to those who can’t let go of their past.  
  
And she has so much past that’s been hard to let go of.  
  
She can’t look up at her old headmaster. It’s not just the stone in her hand but the water in her eyes holding her back. She will not be weak. Not in front of anyone, but especially not in front of him.  
  
Her ire toward him is ill-founded and she knows it. But he seemed like Merlin once to her childish eyes, omnipotent and omniscient. He’s just a wizard, she knows now. A man like any other. Powerful, yes, but not all powerful.  
  
Still, it’s easier to place blame at his feet than shoulder some of it herself.  
  
He’s here asking her for something. For her help. For her expertise. And he’s not come empty-handed. No, not by a long shot. He’s brought this. He’s brought a twisted sort of hope and the answers to some of her eternal “if only”s. Justified or not, she hates him a little more for it.  
  
The “what ifs” of her life play out their questions again, jarring with their sharp edges and truncated lives.  
  
What if Marlene had survived? What if Abby hadn’t killed herself? What if her own mother had been caught sooner? What if Peter - sad, jealous little Peter - had been a little more transparent? What if Tia and Regulus had made it work? What if Stella hadn’t been tortured beyond the edge of sanity? What if James and Lily hadn’t changed their secret keeper? What if Sirius...  
  
She can’t finish that question. It has too many endings to contemplate. But the ones that follow are possibly worse, haunting like the spectres of her long-dead friends.  
  
What if she hadn’t left England at all? What if she’d been brave?  
  
But the stone... for all its supposed power, the stone can’t undo the last fifteen years. Life has been lived - and lost - and she has mourned. Still mourns. But her life has gone on and she cannot live it as a shade. Not even for them.  
  
“I can’t help you,” she says finally, her voice splintered and hard.  
  
She dares to look up at the professor. His whole frame sags at her words and the sorrow that lives in his eyes feels horribly familiar. He’s never seemed so weak, so mortal, to her as he does in that moment. Something in her breaks a little at the sight and a feeling that almost seems like compassion settles painfully in her gut.  
  
She traces the crack in the stone with the pad of her thumb, slow and reverent, before extending her hand and placing the jewelry back in his palm.  
  
“There’s no help to be had here, professor,” she tells him solemnly. “For either of us”

 


End file.
